(written on Dec 5)
Right now I'm on a plane returning to the States. Reflecting back, it seems like everything passed so quickly.
First things first, a recap of the last week is an order. I've been traveling a lot: through 8 different countries in the past 7 days. I wanted to pack in as much as I could before heading back to Seattle.
After leaving Split, Croatia on Tuesday the 29th (successfully catching the bus), I visited Plitvice Lakes National Park. It was a wonderland of water and ice. When I was there half the park was closed, but I got to see the biggest waterfall and hundreds of others. I ended up hiking to the top of the big waterfall and what I saw amazed me. Adam from Split said that it "was like something out of The Land Before Time" and he was right! I tried to capture what I saw with some photos, but the fresh air, the roar of the waterfalls, and the feeling of looking over the edge of a cliff and seeing a 270 degree view from up high was so much better.
In the evening I took another bus to Zagreb and then a train into Ljubljana, Slovenia. My hostel was a former prison, which was kind of cool. Before I went to bed, though, I met some awesome Slovenians who were at a concert in the hostel. They took me out to discover the city at night, and made sure that I ate some traditional Slovenian food, aka a "burek." Apparently the pizza flavored burek is the best so I got that one. I have to say, it was a bit like a pizza pretzel on steriods, very greasy and good.
The next day I went and explored the city center and the Ljubljana Castle. It was really foggy so I couldn't see too much. On the bright side, the fog made the photos turn out eerily cool.
That evening I caught an overnight train to Zurich, Switzerland. I was originally planning to sleep the whole trip, but I met a Slovenian girl who worked for the Slovenian equivalent of NPR (she actually gave the news on air) and we talked and played cards until almost 2 AM. It was unexpected and very fun.
In the morning we parted ways and I headed to Zermatt. Zermatt is a mountain village in Switzerland located at the base of the Matterhorn. From there I took the highest cable car in Europe up the Klein Matterhorn, a nearby mountain, and walked the last few steps to the top, around 12,700 feet. The name of the year-round ski area near the summit, "Matterhorn Glacier Paradise," was fitting.
The Matterhorn from Zermatt
The Matterhorn from the summit of Klein Matterhorn
In the evening, I caught a train to Geneva to visit Abbi at the University of Geneva dorms. We started the next day with a tour of the United Nations, where we actually witnessed a meeting of the delegates (on what to do about the violence in Syria). Naturally, I went off and visited the World Meteorological Organization as well.
It turns out the following day was a race to celebrate a huge holiday in Geneva called L'Escalade where they warded off an attack long ago. Abbi and some of her friends had signed up so we all went to the registration for the race and got free food :) Unfortunately I couldn't actually stay to watch the race the next morning because I had to catch a train to Milan, Italy where I caught a flight to Lappeenranta, Finland. The airport in Lappeenranta, some 10 kilometers from the Russian border, consisted of one gate that wasn't even labeled because it was the only one. I was still pleasantly surprised to find both snow and holiday cheer in Finland that made me look forward to Christmas even more.
After eating a burger in Lappeenranta, I got on the train to Tampere, where I was planning on visiting my friend Livija who I met on a cruise ship between Tallinn and Helsinki at the beginning of my Eurotrip. A French guy named Stephane I met on the flight was going on the same train so we played a game of chess on his computer.
During my time in Tampere I slept most of the time, but the second night I met up with Livija and we went out to a bar where we met an older Finnish couple. The woman did not speak very good English but put a lot of effort into it so it was fun to talk to her and for us all to laugh together.
Today I boarded a train and then a bus for the Helsinki airport. I caught my first flight to Copenhagen, grabbing a Danish during my layover. And here I am now, on a plane back to the States after 3 months of unbelievably amazing travels.
One thing I've learned from this trip is that, like Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home." I lived in the Seattle area all of my life up until this trip and never really left for more than a week or two at a time. I didn't realize how important all of my friends and family were to me, and how long I had known some of them. I not only took these relationships for granted, but also other things like having a long-term place to stay and a job with a lot of flexibility.
Another big thing I realized is that the world is really big and not centered on the USA. I have to be honest, for most of my life I didn't even consider leaving the US because none of my extended family had ever left the country and I thought it was just better to explore inside our borders for financial reasons and because I wouldn't have to deal with a language barrier. Of course there is so much to see inside of our borders, but you don't really get the experience of major culture differences that makes traveling fun!
In general, people in the US do not experience long-term traveling nearly as much as their counterparts in other countries. For instance, Australia, a country of 22 million, had more people in Europe while I was there than the US with a population of over 300 million. I talked to some Australians about this and they told me it was expected that they would take a year off between high school and college or between jobs sometime during their lives to experience the world. Perhaps if more people did this in the United States then we would be more knowledgeable as a whole about the world around us from not only what we hear about it, but what we experience.
As a closing note, I will just say that my trip was a life-changing experience for more reasons than I can list in this blog. Still, I hope you all have enjoyed following my footsteps as I trekked across one of the most amazing and diverse places in the world! Thanks for reading.
Josh
Right now I'm on a plane returning to the States. Reflecting back, it seems like everything passed so quickly.
First things first, a recap of the last week is an order. I've been traveling a lot: through 8 different countries in the past 7 days. I wanted to pack in as much as I could before heading back to Seattle.
After leaving Split, Croatia on Tuesday the 29th (successfully catching the bus), I visited Plitvice Lakes National Park. It was a wonderland of water and ice. When I was there half the park was closed, but I got to see the biggest waterfall and hundreds of others. I ended up hiking to the top of the big waterfall and what I saw amazed me. Adam from Split said that it "was like something out of The Land Before Time" and he was right! I tried to capture what I saw with some photos, but the fresh air, the roar of the waterfalls, and the feeling of looking over the edge of a cliff and seeing a 270 degree view from up high was so much better.
In the evening I took another bus to Zagreb and then a train into Ljubljana, Slovenia. My hostel was a former prison, which was kind of cool. Before I went to bed, though, I met some awesome Slovenians who were at a concert in the hostel. They took me out to discover the city at night, and made sure that I ate some traditional Slovenian food, aka a "burek." Apparently the pizza flavored burek is the best so I got that one. I have to say, it was a bit like a pizza pretzel on steriods, very greasy and good.
The next day I went and explored the city center and the Ljubljana Castle. It was really foggy so I couldn't see too much. On the bright side, the fog made the photos turn out eerily cool.
That evening I caught an overnight train to Zurich, Switzerland. I was originally planning to sleep the whole trip, but I met a Slovenian girl who worked for the Slovenian equivalent of NPR (she actually gave the news on air) and we talked and played cards until almost 2 AM. It was unexpected and very fun.
In the morning we parted ways and I headed to Zermatt. Zermatt is a mountain village in Switzerland located at the base of the Matterhorn. From there I took the highest cable car in Europe up the Klein Matterhorn, a nearby mountain, and walked the last few steps to the top, around 12,700 feet. The name of the year-round ski area near the summit, "Matterhorn Glacier Paradise," was fitting.
In the evening, I caught a train to Geneva to visit Abbi at the University of Geneva dorms. We started the next day with a tour of the United Nations, where we actually witnessed a meeting of the delegates (on what to do about the violence in Syria). Naturally, I went off and visited the World Meteorological Organization as well.
It turns out the following day was a race to celebrate a huge holiday in Geneva called L'Escalade where they warded off an attack long ago. Abbi and some of her friends had signed up so we all went to the registration for the race and got free food :) Unfortunately I couldn't actually stay to watch the race the next morning because I had to catch a train to Milan, Italy where I caught a flight to Lappeenranta, Finland. The airport in Lappeenranta, some 10 kilometers from the Russian border, consisted of one gate that wasn't even labeled because it was the only one. I was still pleasantly surprised to find both snow and holiday cheer in Finland that made me look forward to Christmas even more.
After eating a burger in Lappeenranta, I got on the train to Tampere, where I was planning on visiting my friend Livija who I met on a cruise ship between Tallinn and Helsinki at the beginning of my Eurotrip. A French guy named Stephane I met on the flight was going on the same train so we played a game of chess on his computer.
During my time in Tampere I slept most of the time, but the second night I met up with Livija and we went out to a bar where we met an older Finnish couple. The woman did not speak very good English but put a lot of effort into it so it was fun to talk to her and for us all to laugh together.
Today I boarded a train and then a bus for the Helsinki airport. I caught my first flight to Copenhagen, grabbing a Danish during my layover. And here I am now, on a plane back to the States after 3 months of unbelievably amazing travels.
One thing I've learned from this trip is that, like Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home." I lived in the Seattle area all of my life up until this trip and never really left for more than a week or two at a time. I didn't realize how important all of my friends and family were to me, and how long I had known some of them. I not only took these relationships for granted, but also other things like having a long-term place to stay and a job with a lot of flexibility.
Another big thing I realized is that the world is really big and not centered on the USA. I have to be honest, for most of my life I didn't even consider leaving the US because none of my extended family had ever left the country and I thought it was just better to explore inside our borders for financial reasons and because I wouldn't have to deal with a language barrier. Of course there is so much to see inside of our borders, but you don't really get the experience of major culture differences that makes traveling fun!
In general, people in the US do not experience long-term traveling nearly as much as their counterparts in other countries. For instance, Australia, a country of 22 million, had more people in Europe while I was there than the US with a population of over 300 million. I talked to some Australians about this and they told me it was expected that they would take a year off between high school and college or between jobs sometime during their lives to experience the world. Perhaps if more people did this in the United States then we would be more knowledgeable as a whole about the world around us from not only what we hear about it, but what we experience.
As a closing note, I will just say that my trip was a life-changing experience for more reasons than I can list in this blog. Still, I hope you all have enjoyed following my footsteps as I trekked across one of the most amazing and diverse places in the world! Thanks for reading.
Josh
